Sunday, September 16, 2012

Nightmare Castle (1965)

Who's in it?: Barbara Steele (The Pit and the Pendulum, Piranha)

What's it about?: A scientist kills his unfaithful wife and her lover, then marries her twin step-sister (?!), to try to claim her fortune. Too bad the wife and her boyfriend aren't quite done with the doctor just yet.

How is it?: Pretty ridiculous. Steele plays both the wife and her step-sister, which makes no sense. Why couldn't it just have been an honest-for-real twin sister? There's also an unnecessary plot about the doctor's trying to keep his own lover - an elderly housekeeper - young with some sort of essence he took from his wife's corpse and plans to take from the sister once he's done with her. More shades of The Corpse Vanishes. And the doctor's plan to drive his mentally unstable, new bride completely insane is totally reminiscent of Gaslight.

The movie does take place in a castle though with lots of secret passages and hidden rooms, so it has that going for it. And the ghosts of the wife and her lover are pretty spooky, though not as cool as they look on that poster.